I'm 49 and have only been a ham for going on 11 years now. I dabbled in CB off and on (mostly off) since I was about your age, prior to that I was strictly and SWL and enjoyed building crystal sets. I always wished that I had my ticket, but I thought you had to be a rocket scientist to get one, so I never bothered. Then, along came the internet and after discovering pretty much anybody could get their license and it wasn't that hard (after checking out the stuff on ARRL), I went ahead and went for it.

I wish my dad or granddad had been into amateur radio and the only guy in one of the towns that I grew up in that was a ham was the mean old guy that ran kids out of his yard, so, I never got brave enough to ask him what his tower and antennas were for.

Well, that's my story, abbreviated, and there is a bit more on my qrz.com bio. I hope more young hams show up to use the site here, Buddy has a nice one here for us to use. M3h, I'm not a young ham anymore..... not on the outside anyway, just on the inside, and besides, "I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night."

To get things started here Im wondering how other people make money from their blogs. My two ways as of now are AdSense and Text-Link-Ads. Ive started in on ReviewMe and Im looking into more all the time.

I also started in Minnesota. at least the interest.
a couple of us in Sherburn high school formed a radio club.
no one got licensed but we played with radios and electricity a bit.

I went on to get 2nd phone by the time i was 21. joined the army.
got conditional there. went on to advanced 25 years later.
I have GROL since '85
I worked backwards from commercial to an amateur license.